First, let me say thank you for such a cool plug-in. Before Adblock I left Flash uninstalled, as it was the only way I could find to avoid blinky-flashy advertisements. With Adblock life is much better.

A few small UI suggestions:
* Could the "Adblock Options" and "Help" menu widgets pick up the standard black downward pointing triangle to indicate that they are menus? Currently they look like text, until you hover over them, when they look like buttons. I was surprised when I clicked on Adblock Options to get a menu -- I expected another dialog.

* Could the "Done" button not have the "default button" appearance? At least on Windows, "Done" draws with the appearance of a widget that will be activated on pressing return (like the default "OK" button in an OK/Cancel dialog). If it looked like a non-default button, it might help indicate that pressing return does something else in this dialog.

* Could there be a small "Add" button after the filter input line? It could invoke the same code as pressing enter. When I first saw the prefs dialog I wasn't sure you could add new filters to it, since I was used to adding by right-clicking on things.

Thanks again for such a great tool. I have it installed on all my machines. Cheers,

iwpg:
1. On the macintosh, mozilla has the nonstandard behaviour of activating widgets when their label is clicked. I found that altering the cursor to indicate this minimized the unpleasance.
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2. I just installed Skypilot Classic, and it does have an odd charm. However, its visual-design could be described as "non-conformist" at best. With a theme this jarring, why would Adblock's borders stand out in any way?

On the macintosh, mozilla has the nonstandard behaviour of activating widgets when their label is clicked.

Actually, that's been standard behavior on Macs for over a decade, if not forever. Mozilla has problems displaying the correct cursor anyway--passing through the URL bar often leaves me navigating menus with an I-beam cursor.

I no longer pay much attention to cursor style in Mozilla. I'd rather some effort be spent on getting text selection back the way it was in Netscape 4 (doubleclick-drag adds whole words to the selection, in either direction). If some folks don't like that, make it a pref. The present method (1.3.1, I'm in OS 9) is brain dead.

Lanny:
Yea- you're right. Before I wrote that, I did a quick test in the "Date & Time" control panel. There was a bit of lag as the time-synchronizer loaded, and my "label-clicks" must have registered atop each other and nullified.
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Oh well. I still don't like something about mozilla's behaviour. Maybe it's the focus-ring.
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Actually (now that you mention it) I've always hated the "whole-words" way IE and most pc-programs select text. It feels like someone's pushing the cursor ahead. But, since we both run mozilla under os9, it's not like a dev-change would really affect us.

My work includes a lot of editing of URLs in the URL bar, and editing text in <textarea> boxes. Word-by-word selection would save me considerable time and squinting at the screen, since it would significantly reduce the accuracy required. Besides, it's part of the Apple Human Interface Guidelines (which seem to have been abandoned in OS X). To me, it's the most irritating "feature" of mozilla remaining. (Second-most is the context menu popping up after a doubleclick if you wait too long to start dragging.)

If you want character-level selection, simply don't doubleclick on the first word before you drag.

Until we got left behind at 1.3.1, I was following the selection issue in the bugbase. Much disagreement, much fear of offending the unix geeks, eventually the decision was deferred until approximately the heat death of the universe. No way to run a railroad, IMHO. Just make it a pref and move on.

I decided to wait a couple of days before giving feedback on the recent nightlies (my comments were directed at 21). I think the recent changes are a step backward.

Now there are buttons in the Prefs panel that look like plain text widgets. The previous hover-highlight-rectangle for Adblock Options and Help at least indicated that they were not static labels. Now it's only the cursor change.

Likewise, I'm not sure why "Add" is italicized.

Also, as Lanny Chambers noted, changing the cursor over the checkbox labels and controls is a non-standard behavior. I think whatever Adblock does with it's preferences should be identical to what Mozilla does in its preferences dialog.

Again, I only criticize because I really like Adblock and use it daily. Thanks for the great work!

James:
I didn't arbitrarily make any of those changes -- the "standard" methods were first applied, then rejected where aesthetic determined.
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The coloured, italic "Add"-label leaves the entry line well-balanced. The bordered-"regular-text"-button did not, and it also looked wrong above the "Done" button.
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Per menus: the "hover-highlight rectangle" was specific to the modern-theme. I could have forced it for any theme, but I never liked it in the first place. If you used the "Smoke" theme, for example, it would have been borderless all along. And, since they're menus, not buttons, this is more fitting behaviour.
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Adblock is eventually going to have its own, internal theme -- because I don't think any single theme has accomplished the widget-set quite right. I'll marry the best elements, and colour-coordinate the scheme. It'll also lend a more consistently "branded" feel.
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Lastly, the cursor: would you mind posting a screenshot of the "pointer", as it appears on your platform? If it's just the first-fingered-hand, then we're on the same page. Actually, I don't have a good defense: it simply feels more comfortable; I prefer it. Of course, I *might* be persuaded to roll a default-disabled hidden-pref.. you never know ;P

When hovering over clickable Adblock elements on Windows 2000 with Adblock 27 on Firebird 0.7, the cursor changes to a first-finger-hand cursor. So it's doing what you built. I'm just complaining about it.

For example, in both Mozilla and Firebird's Preference dialog, hovering over clickable widgets (like checkboxes) does not change the cursor, but leaves it an upper-left pointing white arrow.

In general, the first-finger-hand cursor is used for hovering over web links, either in a web page, or in an application that will be launching a web browser, or sometimes to indicate that the application's main window is going to be directed to another "page". Using it for other purposes weakens that meaning.

Perhaps you feel the cursor needs to change because the underlying widgets don't look clickable? Maybe the problem is the underlying widgets and not the cursor?